Background: Neuropathic pain is defined as pain arising from dysfunction of somatosensory system according to Neuropathic pain special interest group of International association for the study of pain. Objective of study: To quantitatively explore the existing evidence base for ‘neuropathic pain’ in PubMed through a review and analysis of current scientific literature. Methods: Descriptive exploratory study through a literature search was done to identify nine timepoints in the timeline from 1970-2010, with five-year intervals in order to identify the scientific trend. The number of obtained citations were classified and analyzed under the names of search filters of PubMed namely- text availability, publication date, species, article type, language, gender, subject areas, journal categories and age groups. The numbers for categories and subcategories of search filters were considered for comparison and analysis. Descriptive analysis using frequencies on Microsoft Excel 2010 worksheet was done. Results:There was an exponential increase in number of articles on neuropathic pain over the 40 years. There was more number of ‘abstract available’ articles. Human studies were more than animal studies. There was more number of reviews, case reports and clinical trials among the article types. More articles were of English language, with nearly equal gender representation. There were more number of articles on cancer, and MEDLINE journals had more articles, with more in adult and middle-age. Conclusion: The number of articles on ‘neuropathic pain’ is steadily increasing with more studies indexed in PubMed every year. The study findings are of importance to biomedical librarians and neuroscientists for neuropathic pain-related evidence retrieval.

Key words: Neuropathic pain evidence; PubMed analysis; Nerve pain; Research analysis; Reporting trend.